Interview Insight DEFI with Pascal Hügli
Interview Insight DEFI with Pascal Hügli
Kindly introduce yourself and describe your blockchain / DeFi / Web 3 journey
- My name is Pascal Hügli and I’ve worked as a journalist and content producer in the field of blockchain for the past 5 years. Bitcoin, I discovered during my time at university and after some initial reading, I fell down the rapid hole. Today I am still highly fascinated by the project and I believe that the Bitcoin phenomenon is the single most important development of our time. In recent years I’ve also been looking into DeFi quite closely. I’ve tried out a lot of the functionalities myself, so a lot of is learning by doing as we innovate.
Describe your company and business case – what product/value are you offering to the blockchain ecosystem and your clients?
- Currently, I am mainly self-employed. I’ve been working as an educator and lecturer at various schools and initiatives and my goal is to educate as many people as possible on Bitcoin and DeFi. In order to further this cause, I’ve also set up a newsletter by the name Insight DeFi. This bi-monthly newsletter is exclusively in German and its goal is to give people an edge in the crypto world – people that normally don’t have the time to dig deep because of their day job. At the same time, I do support an upcoming asset manager by the name of Schlossberg&Co, where we bridge traditional as well as digital assets. We have track certificates where we actively trade crypto assets.
How do you support existing and new Defi companies?
- For one thing, I do educate a lot of people on the topic of DeFi. My education is always attempting to be shaped in a practical way, which is why I also do present actual use cases to people – use cases I personally like and have tried out. This way I am giving exposure to these different projects. Here and there I also do support actual founders with my expertise by doing some consulting.
What is your thesis about DeFi and Web 3.0?
- My belief is that we are currently witnessing the emergence of a new financial order 2.0 and this entire ecosystem will be built in layers and open, public blockchains. Increasing interoperability will make it possible that all of these projects will be interactive with one another. Because public blockchain act as new global settlement layers that are functioning independently of the traditional system, we have a true alternative financial system that is being built from scratch. I do think though, that the old system is going to be using the new DeFi space. In my thoughts, DeFi will radically disintermediate the current financial system. Just as the emergence of open-source software has push companies up the stack to the aggregator and application layer, today’s financial institutions will also move up the stack by becoming more like financial amigos that will offer all kinds of services and top of DeFi. But DeFi primitives will be the backbone of the new financial system taking over the work in what I call the “Maschinenraum”, i.e. engine room.
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In my thoughts, DeFi will radically disintermediate the current financial system.
What are you most excited about (Web 3.0, DeFi, Interoperability, Liquidity, Farming, Layer 1/2/3, SSI, NFT, Social Tokens etc.)?
- All of the points mentioned in our question are highly interesting. One thing I would surely add is the ongoing tokenization of everything. I truly think that every meat space thing will at some point have a digital representative. Because of this uber-tokenization, we will have a lot more things to collateralize and financialize the world. This obviously has its downsides and risks. But at the same time, because these new forms of collateral ultimately exist on public blockchains that are open, global, and permissionless, financial activities like leveraging-up, that today are only really accessible to the wealthy (but help them to stay wealthy), will become available to average people. This I think is an interesting development.
What are the major roadblocks for the adoption of Web 3.0 / blockchain-based finance (DeFi)?
- I think it’s about the usual buzzwords: Scalability and interoperability. The public blockchains wouldn’t be able to scale, much of what is possible will only be affordable to a few wealthy people. Luckily, the layered approach in scaling is catching on evermore. At the same time, I think interoperability is really important. If we don’t focus on this, we will be created now silos in the form of different public blockchains that won’t be able to communicate with one another – this is exactly the problem the internet is facing today. Luckily here as well, there are many projects focusing on this. Greater interoperability will also help combat tribalism in a natural way.
What protocols/networks do you support the most – kindly share some insights?
- Everything on the front of scalability, as well as interoperability, is interesting.
Do you want to share your TOP 10 DeFi portfolio?
- I won’t share too much as much of this is the content of your newsletter 😊.
- The usual contenders are obviously the big DeFi names like Uniswap, Aave, Maker, or Synthetix. Let me maybe point to some more unknown, but in my view still interesting projects.
- Perpetual Protocol when it comes to derivate trading (https://perp.fi/)
- Icon 2.0 when it comes to interoperability (https://iconrepublic.org/)
- Soar when it comes to liquidity enhancing (https://soar.fi/)
- Streamer when it comes to Web 3.0 (https://streamr.network/)
- Obviously Polygon and various second-layer projects happening on top of it like Dfyn, Quickswap, etc.
- And surely DeFi happening on Bitcoin (Sovryn and many more) (https://www.sovryn.app/)
Next steps / roadmap 2021 / 2022
- We keep on working on our newsletter and try to develop it into one of the go-to sources for German-speaking folks.
What are you looking for (funding, talent, network, sales etc.)
- Currently, I am mainly looking for new subscribers to our newsletter 😊
Pascal Hügli:
How to get in contact with you?
- Please hit me up on insightdefi@gmail.com or on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-huegli/
- Sign-up newsletter: https://insightdefi.substack.com/
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- RISK DISCLAIMER: All information presented above is meant for informational purposes only and should not be treated as financial, legal, or tax advice. This article’s content solely reflects the opinion of the writer, who is not a financial advisor. Do your own research before you purchase cryptocurrencies. Any cryptocurrency can go down in value. Holding cryptocurrencies is risky.
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